The House Oversight and Reform Committee held a hearing Thursday on abortion rights in response to the spate of anti-abortion laws being instituted across the country.
Three female Democrats — Reps. Cori Bush of Missouri, Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Barbara Lee of California — all shared their personal stories of having undergone abortions. In a just world, their testimony wouldn’t be required to secure basic human rights like abortion access for all.
Nonetheless, each offered powerful testimony that revealed the hardships of women — particularly Black and brown women — who seek reproductive care.
Bush shared that she had an abortion at age 18 after she survived a sexual assault.
“Choosing to have an abortion was the hardest decision I had ever made, but at 18 years old I knew it was the right decision for me,” she said. “It was freeing knowing I had options.”
She decried a society that shows inadequate love to Black women:
To all the Black women and girls who have had abortions and will have abortions, we have nothing to be ashamed of. We live in a society that has failed to legislate love and justice for us. So we deserve better, we demand better, we are worthy of better.
Jayapal testified that she had an abortion that remained a secret — to the public and her family — until 2019, when she shared the news in an op-ed for The New York Times.
She said that she became pregnant despite having taken a daily contraceptive and that she knew the pregnancy would be “high risk” to her and her child given complications from a previous pregnancy. She explained why she kept her abortion secret for years:
As an immigrant from a culture that deeply values children, and in an American society that still stigmatizes abortion, suicide and mental health needs, I felt shame that I never should have felt.
Lee described having to get an abortion in a “back alley” in Mexico at age 16 because she felt too ashamed to get one in the U.S.
“I’m sharing my story even though I truly believe it is personal and, really, nobody’s business,” she said. “And certainly not the business of politicians.”
She explained the struggles of getting abortion care in a pre-Roe v. Wade world, a time when many women and girls were forced to undergo abortions in unsafe circumstances.
“A lot of girls and women in my generation didn’t make it,” Lee said. “They died from unsafe abortions. … We continue to witness states attempting to take us back to the days I know so well.”
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Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.